Why a Youthquake is Roiling Europe’s Fashion Houses

Fashion’s great game of musical chairs is not only shortening the tenure of creative directors, it has temporarily sidelined some of the industry’s most famous and accomplished talents.

Chalk it up to fashion’s relentless hunger for newness, its long-standing obsession with youth — plus a new appreciation for internal mobility, observers say.

“The necessity of creating the new is really something that always regulates the industry, so the disposability of people is part of that,” said Marco Pecorari, assistant professor and program director of the master of arts in fashion studies at Parsons Paris. 

Underscoring the enduring fashionability of change in fashion, marquee talents including John Galliano, Hedi Slimane, Pierpaolo Piccioli and Kim Jones are now free agents following the recent appointments of their successors at Maison Margiela, Celine, Valentino and Dior Men, respectively.

While the circumstances at each fashion house were unique, with some designers resigning and others exiting at the end of their latest contract, the end result points to another youthquake moment.

In addition, in December, Chanel named Bottega Veneta fashion star Matthieu Blazy, 40, as its new artistic director of fashion activities, succeeding Virginie Viard, 62.

Pecorari drew a parallel between the most recent flurry of designer changes and the late ’90s and early 2000s, when Europe’s luxury conglomerates were forming and such famous houses as Gucci, Dior, Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton welcomed mostly young, buzzy talents to reawaken dusty heritage names, setting a template that largely endures to this day.

“How fashion can be attractive to young generations has always been an important thing,” he said. “I think often age is an answer to that, so taking on younger designers.”

He cited as an example Ferragamo conscripting Maximilian Davis, then 27, as its new creative director in 2022, thrusting the relatively green Trinidadian-British designer into the international spotlight. “That’s a typical example when a brand really sees the necessity of attracting and dialoguing and connecting to a completely different generation,” he said.

Indeed, “the idea of going for young blood, let’s say, has always been there,” Pecorari said, mentioning the historic example of Yves Saint Laurent succeeding Christian Dior in 1957 at the age of 21.

Fast-forward to today, and a host of fortysomething designers are rising up the ranks.

“This year, coming fashion weeks will mark history,” said Floriane de Saint Pierre, who runs an eponymous executive search and luxury consultancy in Paris, highlighting the unprecedented number of designer debuts coming up at the most influential brands in fashion, also mentioning Bottega Veneta, Versace, Jil Sander and Jean Paul Gaultier.

“Among multibillion-euro brands such as Gucci, Dior Homme and Loewe, which have announced a marquee name, two out of three chose a talent inside the group,” she noted, referring to Demna’s appointment at Gucci after a stellar, and at times controversial, stint at Balenciaga and Jonathan Anderson to Dior menswear after an acclaimed 11-year tenure at Loewe.

“Choosing an internal talent might be equally dictated by promoting talent or by pragmatism,” she said.

(Anderson is also widely expected to become creative director of women’s collections at Dior, ultimately succeeding Maria Grazia Chiuri, 61.)

Although the Antwerp-based house is of a much smaller scale, Dries Van Noten also selected a young, inside talent — Julian Klausner, 33 — to succeed the namesake founder, who retired from the runway last year at age 66.

Meanwhile, “all other large influential brands have chosen creative directors without a marquee name, but highly prepared career credentials,” de Saint Pierre said, referring to the likes of Versace’s new chief creative officer Dario Vitale, previously Miu Miu’s ready-to-wear design director, and Michael Rider, who will make his debut at Celine this July after years in the studio of Polo Ralph Lauren.

Brands such as Missoni and Joseph have also opted for industry veterans. Missoni promoted Alberto Caliri, who’d been with the brand since 1998, to creative director, while Joseph named Mario Arena, who has more than 30 years experience in luxury, to the design helm.

Other new appointees had already logged their first success as creative directors, with Carven and Lacoste alumni Louise Trotter taking over at Bottega Veneta, Gucci alum Simone Bellotti graduating from Bally to Jil Sander, and Glenn Martens taking on Maison Margiela while continuing to lead sister OTB brand Diesel.

“In this time of global economic uncertainty, the ability to bring an inspiring global narrative, fresh design creativity and combine it with an efficient product offering is for sure a key success factor,” de Saint Pierre said. “Most recent hirings seem to reflect this.”

She noted that influential fashion brands of a smaller scale tend to choose a designer, whether younger or senior, “whose talent will generate high attention,” mentioning the choices of Duran Lantink for Jean Paul Gaultier and Haider Ackermann for Tom Ford.

All of that change has left a good number of seasoned creative directors out of the spotlight, including Luke and Lucie Meier, who exited Jil Sander in February; Sabato De Sarno, ousted from Gucci the same month; Jeremy Scott, now doing beauty and theater projects in his post-Moschino career; Kris Van Assche, previously leading Berluti and Dior Men, and Riccardo Tisci, formerly of Burberry and Givenchy.

(As reported on May 1, Tisci is facing allegations of sexual assault in New York, which he denies).

Parsons’ Pecorari noted that seasoned fashion stars like Galliano and Slimane “have the agency not to be involved anymore” in a changing fashion system they may no longer relate to.

He was referring to a gradual erosion of in-depth research and development in fashion houses in favor of speedier design processes for the social-media generations, and sped-up collection cycles. “It feels like almost a reaction to the ways in which the business is going,” he commented.

Mary Gallagher, senior consultant at Find executive consulting, said star designers have “been responsible not only for their previous brands’ bottom-line success, but also for the image and recognition of fashion in general. Even if they’re not currently attached to a brand, they are being sought after.”

That said, given the intensity of the fashion system and sped-up collection cycles, “I think it can be a healthy thing for creatives who are constantly in the spotlight to sideline themselves before jumping back into the fray,” Gallagher commented. “There are a lot of instances of star designers taking on smaller projects during their sabbaticals, like when Phoebe Philo consulted for Gap, Riccardo Tisci’s designs for Nike, and Natacha Ramsay-Levi’s collaborations with APC and Ecco. Some, like Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, pursued their second act and never looked back. Creative people are rarely ready to be put out to pasture.”

Emma Davidson, owner and managing director of the London-based fashion recruitment firm Denza, would agree.

“Some creatives want to take a break and reset, or they have non-compete clauses. Those who have started their own brands are maybe doing both, and letting the heat die down so their new work gets to speak. They may be securing financing for personal projects, or preparing to launch their own collections. And those things take time,” she said.

Other designers are financially comfortable enough to take a break on their own terms.

Over the past two decades “the remuneration for creative directors has been extraordinary, so people can afford to take a break for five years,” said Giles Deacon, who has his own couture business and designs for the Richemont-owned James Purdey & Sons and the interiors brand Sanderson. (In the late ’90s, he was called upon by Bottega Veneta to rev up that business.)

Deacon said Slimane, who left the creative helm of Celine last year, has managed his career with aplomb, pursuing his interests in design and photography, and working to his own timetable. “If a designer has an opportunity to recalibrate, I think it’s the intelligent thing to do,” he said.

To be sure, those so-called star designers are still a strong and “secure” option for brands, especially when “there is a need of sure success” and/or a reshuffle of the business, with Gucci’s choice of Demna as a good example, given his long experience and design chops, Percorari said.

Louis Vuitton’s recruitment of Pharrell Williams as its men’s creative director in 2023 also exemplified the cult of personality that has become part and parcel of fashion’s marketing mechanisms.

Cardi B recently launched an apparel and beauty partnership with Revolve, and Rihanna, Beyoncé and A$AP Rocky are among other musicians with fashion ventures.

Indeed, the “star” factor is so strong today that Pecorari confessed that April Fool’s posts that Balenciaga had chosen singer Charli XCX as its new creative director seemed almost plausible.

“It was not so far from what you might expect brands to do,” he said. “Fashion went from being a quite exclusive, relatively small business to a globalized phenomenon where it becomes popular culture.”

Some would argue that picking a celebrity is the wrong way forward.

“I see the companies behind brands looking for hype rather than caring about what collections are about, their stories, and the joy they can bring to our lives,” said Davidson.

She added that when it comes to celebrities, “The Row is the only brand where actors have been successful.” Founded by twin sister actresses Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, The Row is something of an outlier in the luxury business.

But sometimes brands need celebrities to bridge creative director appointments, and buy themselves time to find the right person.

“Vision, gifts, skill and inspiration can come from the most unexpected quarters and many talents are inherently good at easily going from one activity to another, whether it’s product designers, arbiters of style, or athletes who inform design through their expertise and needs,” Gallagher opined.

Davidson agreed that creatives come in all shapes and sizes, and whomever is doing the job “just needs to be ready to apply their creativity in different ways, and be given a positive environment to do it in.”

That search for “the one” can often be lengthy, with brands — and especially the publicly quoted ones — under intense pressure to produce a marquee name pronto.

De Saint Pierre lamented that few houses are ready with a succession plan following the departure of a creative director, even though “brand equity and performance are strongly related to creative leadership.”

“Today, more than ever, governance of short- and long-term performance is related to governance of brand and creative leadership, which must be at the center of key stakeholders’ attention — shareholders, boards and the CEO,” she explained. “Talents are few and are often not available quickly when needed. Looking long-term in brand and creative leadership strategy and acting through ongoing reviews is certainly a good governance practice.”